Friday, December 28, 2007

The pics we take with a digital camera are usually around 1.5-3 MB based on the resolution. I often waste time and bandwidth to upload such big images in websites like snapfish, orkut, facebook, flickr. I always wanted a simple utility that could be used to compress images in a folder. I wrote one software during my BE but did not carry it with me to US so I always had to use some Paint.NET or other Image Processing tools. I started my new year coding with Image Processing tool - trueBuddi Image Compressor. I would upload it on my website. It is very easy to use and is available hereIt requires .NET Framework 2.0 to run. Right now it compresses images within a specified folder and that too only those with .JPG extension.Future revisions:1. Individual File Compression2. Image Processing Operations - Contrast enhancement, Brightness, Noise Reduction, Sharpening, etc.3. Support for conversion among JPG, TIFF, PNG and other such types.Ideas welcome. The tool is free to use and is not restricted with any kind of license. You can do a Reflector and anything that you want. Just do not change the title of the Frame.

UPDATE: In case I am the Tutor for Java Programming, I would record these screencasts when I am teaching my students, otherwise this project is almost shelved until February!I plan to release my screencasts on the following topics.1. Object Oriented Programming in Java2. Design Patterns in Java3. Java EE Development

Disclaimer: I am not a guru in any of the above mentioned topics but I love programming and these are for my friends who are the only few visitors to my blog. So if there are any mistakes by me, please bring it to my notice so that I will learn better and I am not responsible for what so ever happens because of these screencasts.

Originally, I wanted to host my screencasts on truebuddi.wikidot.com but it does not allow me to attach video uploads. I am looking for Google Jotspot and I hope it would allow me to post videos. In the worst case, you would have to download the files from the link I give.

If you have more suggestions, let me know.

For now, here is one video that I would upload TurboGears-Getting started.

I have been searching a lot for free Camtasia alternatives that would allow me to prepare screencasts. Till date I have found three good tools

1. Free Screen Recorder http://www.nbxsoft.com/screen-recorder.phpPretty decent tool, allows you to save screencast as AVI files. Best option is to download Vista Codec Package from http://www.free-codecs.com/download/Vista_Codec_Package.htm and in the settings choose XVID compression with as least quality as you want. You can record voice too.

2. DebugMode Winkhttp://www.debugmode.com/wink/A much more complicated software, allows you to store captures as SWF files. Lots of options but little bit uneasy to use.

3. CamStudiohttp://camstudio.org/Free and open source. But resource intensive. Good for high end systems.

Another good tool is ZoomIt by SysInternals. It helps you zoom particular portion of screen, would be useful when u want to show something more clearly, during presentations or screencasts. Free download fromhttp://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897434.aspx

More on sysinternals tools, you get awesome little tools at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/0e18b180-9b7a-4c49-8120-c47c5a693683.aspx and they are all free. Amazing tools, trust me.

Saturday, December 08, 2007

The semester is almost over. Two more exams and I will be done with the Fall 2008 semester at UGA. Looking back, one question that every student should probably ask himself is "Was I a good student?" By that I just mean what did I learn this semester? Well, I should say it was not the most inspiring semester I had in my student life, but definitely one of the hectic semester. I did learn a lot about simulation, especially parallel, distributed simulation, worked on my thesis to a great extent, participated in international capture the flag competition, attended an unsuccessful interview, realized that I am good but not good enough to become one of the best developers for a company. I developed a bad game, developed a great soccer simulator, developed a good library that can be used to develop P2P-ized applications, worked a lot on web crawling, evaluated a lot of "browser" frameworks, worked on SWT, worked on Silverlight, worked on VS 2008 Beta 2, taught a thing or two to my friends about .NET, read a lot about web security, read a lot of papers on simulation. Keeping all this in view I should say that it has been a very eventful semester. Things have been pretty bad on the personal front, but I guess thats the way I become more strong and better. I really am looking forward for the next year. I hope it would be a totally different year and I hope it would be the way I want it to be. As a new year resolution, I plan to quit smoking right from the 31st. I know it is bad and I should not smoke.Coming to the technical front, I have few holidays coming this month and I hope to work on the following.

You should see this presentation and would know why I chose these...http://static.raibledesigns.com/repository/presentations/ComparingJavaWebFrameworks.pdf1. Java Server Faces2. Struts 23. Spring4. Tapestry5. Wicket, Stripes6. Tiles, SiteMesh

I feel my resume is more of .NET and I really am not that bad at Java and neither am I that good at .NET. I really was good at .NET till 1.1 I used to know quite a lot of 1.1, be it asynchronous calls or anything else that complex, I was good at it. But not any more. .NET is now an ocean and my knowledge is really now very little. But the job front on Java Web looks more promising and it would probably add more value to my resume if i can develop applications on both JAva and .NET platforms. Let me see where my learning would go!